Audience Development

YouTube has begun testing a new social feature that lets users see what which videos their friends are watching, rating and commenting on in real-time.



DMW reports that the company has offered a limited number of invites to test the new YouTube RealTime feature, which aims to supplement the current widespread trading of YouTube videos via email, IM, blogs and social networks.

The feature functions as a toolbar at the bottom of the browser window, and provides updates of a user's friends' activities on YouTube in a news feed-type format.

Journalism Online

One of the fascinating challenges about New Media is how to monetise content online. I mean, all too often these days, we expect the internet to give us "stuff" for free - which doesn't bode particularly well for the film industry if we're hoping to use the internet as a dynamic means of distribution that cuts out the middleman. Fortunately we're not alone. The publishing business in particular has been hard hit by people wanting to read their news - for free - online.



So it's good to see a report on DMW that a trio of high flying media executives have announced the launch of a Journalism Online, a new venture that aims to help monetize online news publishing. The venture plans to create a distributable system that will allow publishers to charge annual or monthly subscriptions to view their content, as well as a portal where consumers could pay a single fee to access content from multiple participating publications.

Says co-founder Steven Brill: "We believe we have developed a strategy and a set of services that will establish that model by restoring a stream of circulation revenue to supplement advertising revenue, while taking advantage of the savings to be gained from producing and delivering content electronically."

Watch this space

Spotify

Another music distribution example with possible relevance for film? - Spotify is a music distribution service that some people believe could spell doom for iTunes (www.apple.com/ itunes) or even for the CD. It launched last October and already has a million users.

Spotify works like this: users download a small application, which allows them to listen to any track from a total of thousands of albums at any time. The key difference between this and iTunes is that customers never actually own the music.



Spotify is the most talked-about start-up of the last year, not just because it provides a service that is much in demand, but also because of its interesting model for financing itself. Premium users, who pay £9.99 a month, do not see advertisements served up to them every 20 minutes. But you can enjoy the music for free if you are willing to watch the commercials.

In other words, the service is funded by both advertisements and subscription, which doesn't leave it solely dependent on one or the other method......

Slow Down and Fast

The Slow Down and Fast blog highlights the personal journey of a couple of filmmakers attempting self distribution for their film Slow Down and Fast. The goal is to get 1,000,000 views of the short documenterary, but the blog is also for anyone who wants to discover the powerful marketing potential of Social Networking....

Bridging the Digital Divide

At the Digital Music East conference currently unfolding in the USA, Ron Berry, e-Commerce Advisor to the Isle of Man outlined how the government of that little island is trying to be a pioneer in a field where many larger nations are struggling, namely finding a way to compensate musicians in a digital age.



The basic idea is to charge Internet users a flat fee for access to music online through their Internet Service Provider and then pass that money on to the collection societies, record labels and other interest groups.

Could that work for KZN film??

DVD Sales

Well, here's a grim piece of analysis from DMW: the retail trend in the current US economy is for consumers to only buy DVDs that have a huge marketed presence - ie studio blockbusters with big name stars. And studios are therefore now increasingly only funding movies that they know they can sell on DVD. A vicious circle. Bottom line for indie producers: as this trend trickles down through the industry, it will become harder and harder to find financing based on dvd-sale predictions.

Let's just hope that our market for African films has more in common with Nigeria than it does the USA.

People's Music Store

I like to hope that one day the opportunities becoming available for music distribution will be adapted and adopted for distribution of film content.

Take People's Music Store as an example; it's an online site that lets music fans create and operate their own digital music stores.

Music fans design their storefronts, choose tracks from a library of over 250,000 songs, write their own reviews, and market their stores online. Storekeepers pay nothing to join and earn 10% of every product they sell as "reward points" that they may then spend on music. Imagine something like that for African films! KZN's large population gives us great opportunities for this kind of relationshiop marketing.

Online Video Viewership

DMW notes a report from market research company comScore, that U.S. Internet users watched a record 14.3 billion online videos during December, an increase of 13% from the previous year. YouTube again leading the way with nearly 6 billion streams, or 41% of all U.S. video traffic. A record nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos per viewer in December, with YouTube attracting 100 million viewers -- or two out of every three Internet users who watched video.

Behind YouTube, Fox Interactive Media(which includes MySpace) took second place with 445 million videos viewed (3.1%), followed by Yahoo sites with 330 million (2.3%), and Viacom Digital with 291 million (2%). Hulu - which served 241 million streams - claimed the top session length of the top video sites, with viewers watching an average of 10.1 minutes of video on the site.

Incidentally, Battle at Kruger - a wildlife clip of a battle between lions and crocodiles over a buffalo calf - has had more than 41 million views.....

FILM LONDON PUBLICITY FUND FOR BLACK FILMS

We're about to present our first couple of reports in the Durban and KZN Film Industry review to the DFO and KZNDED. As part of this slate of activities, we've begun looking at some of the most innovative and dynamic programmes used by Film Commissions and Film Offices around the world, which could perhaps be introduced in SA to change the dynamic for locally made movies.



Here for instance is a fund operated by Film London to promote and increase the impact of Black film exhibition in the city. It provides funds specifically for additional publicity and marketing support, in order to both raise the profile of Black film talent, broadly defined, and attract larger audiences, from across all communities.

Examples of fundable activity might include:
• employing a professional PR company or individual
• a targeted advertising campaign in the press, radio, print or online
• enhancing the PR and audience potential of an event by inviting a film-maker or film-makers to attend
• innovation in online marketing
• adding venues to an existing screening programme
• cross-fertilising an event by bringing in another artform, for instance adding a live music element to a film screening event
• creating and running an ambassador or similar community outreach scheme.

The Fund supports additional promotional activity only and really hopes to enable Black film exhibition activity to ‘punch above its weight’ in the capital’s crowded media market. In South Africa, where local films struggle to maintain a cinema presence and often sink without trace after a week, I thought this was pretty cool.

Music Video

I have a little theory that South African Music wil be the single major "left-field" beneficiary of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Remember all those incessant "highlights" clips from the Germany 2006 tournament? They were all edited to music. So now imagine them done to a thumping kwaito beat instead and broadcast round the world to a gazillion homes. And once the music is familiar, audiences are going to search for it on-line and download both the song and the funky video that accompanies it.



To reiterate the sheer opportunity ahead, record label Universal Music Group announced that it too is generating "tens of millions of dollars" from Google's YouTube. Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of the label's eLabs digital division, said:

"YouTube is not like radio, where it's just promotional, it's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."

While Caraeff gave no specifics on Universal's revenue from YouTube, a source close to the label told News.com that the label will likely book nearly $100 million in revenue from video streaming this year -- which includes placements on other sites like MySpace and MTV.

Become a You Tube Partner

This week's Sunday Times included an article syndicated from the New York Times News Service; unfortunately I can't find either source on line to link to. The jist of the article is that internet distribution via YouTube in particular, is creating a whole new raft of productions and celebrities. Check out Michael Buckley's work at What the Buck Show as an example.

All he needed was a $2000 Canon camera, a $6 piece of fabric as a back drop and a pair of working lights.....

yet he has successfully created a product with over 100 million views and a positive revenue stream. Buckley achieved this success by becoming a YouTube partner - allowing YouTube to place adverts within and around partner videos and splitting the ad revenues with the creators. A YouTube spokesman said:

Hundreds of YouTube partners are making thousands of dollars a month

But if you look at Buckley's site, you'll see he's not resting on his laurels; there's a whole lot of extra marketing, networking and cross-promotion going on.

So, why not you? It's not going to be easy, but no one ever said it would be.......

You Tube

YouTube attracted 100 million U.S. online video viewers in October, a month in which U.S. Internet users viewed 13.5 billion videos -- an increase of 45% from the previous year, according to a report from comScore Video Metrix.



Google's sites served nearly 5.4 billion videos to U.S. viewers in October, accounting for 40% of all videos viewed.

Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, was second with 520 million videos (3.8%)

A total of more than 147 million American Internet users -- or 77% of the total U.S. Internet audience -- watched an average of 92 videos per viewer in October.

The trailer is for Durban-shot movie Three Cigarettes.

Fespaco

The Panafrican Film and TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) is the largest African film festival across the continent. The next edition will take place from 28 February to 7 March 2009 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.


www.afrikmedia.com

Featuring a tremendous film festival, a vibrant product market that specialises in African films, and a Professionals programme that includes panels, debates, workshops, roundtable, masterclasses and other invaluable learning opportunities, FESPACO is a must-do for African filmmakers.

Entry forms for both the Festival and the Film and Television Market are available here